I was raised in a working-class environment by my single-parent mum. We lived in one-bedroom flats. We never had a car. I was often teased by other kids at school for not having the right clothes. There were no holidays abroad every summer. In fact, there weren’t many holidays at all.
Fast-forward to today, and I’m raising my children in a middle-class household. They’ve been on holidays and family adventures too numerous to remember, and they’ve never known life without a car. And their parents are in a loving, stable relationship, rooted in an always-available support network.
I often think about their privilege, and what it’s doing to them – how can they truly value what they’ve got if they don’t know anything different? After all, if you’ve never known life without central heating, you barely notice the warmth. But if you grew up without it … you never forget the cold!
This quotation from Ankur Warikoo is helping me reframe the problem: It is not the privilege that harms us. It is our lack of awareness of our privilege that harms us.
So, that’s the job – teach them to value what they have. There are several ways I try to accomplish this in my house:
- Naming without shaming: I tell them how lucky they are multiple times a day: lucky with our house, lucky that we get to go on holiday, lucky with our things, but above all, lucky to have each other and to be healthy.
- A reduced focus on physical things: more time spent together as a family, strengthening attachment bonds and fostering emotional intelligence and awareness. Sure, we go big for birthdays and Christmases (we’re fortunate to be able to), but then we pump the brakes, valuing creativity and contentment over ‘the next thing’.
- Delayed gratification: I make them wait for things.
- Gratitude over guilt: they have nothing to feel guilty for, but everything to feel grateful for. Admittedly, the guilt bit is something I’m still working on myself.
- Chores: everyone contributes.
- Helping others: we all need help, but some need more than others. And we have a duty to assist those in need where we can – not out of guilt, but out of intention. One of my favourite questions to ask my eldest is this: ‘Did anyone need your help at school today?’
Finally, I want them to know that while hard work matters and is completely within their control, where and into which family they were born isn’t; it was random. They got lucky. Not everyone does.
It’s up to my wife and me to teach them that.
